"You're the human equivalent of a shotgun, Shepard. Inelegant, but effective."

Anderson's words - words he'd spoken minutes after she returned from her first mission under his command - had lost none of their sting, but she learned to use it. Everything could be a tool: anger, pain, doubt.

Her body was a tool.

Shepard slammed back into the world a few feet from Jaroth. The impact blew him onto his back, his armor split from neck to belly. He clawed at the air as he tried to rise.

She unholstered her shotgun. Three more mercs jumped the barricade, too far away for their shots to do more than make her barriers shiver.

"You," Jaroth groaned. "I should've known when the mechs overloaded. Too many damn questions. Didn't care about credits."

Shepard reloaded. Kid tech. "You should be nicer to your recruits," she said. She brought up her shotgun, her arms heavy with a dreamy, unfamiliar rage, and aimed for his head.

Before she could fire, a shot sizzled against her barriers as it passed over her right shoulder. It tore off the left half of Jaroth's face and spattered blood across the front of her armor.

"Dammit, Garrus!" she yelled. The first groups of mercs moved into range, trying to box her in; with the energy coiled in her hands, she blasted them off the side of the bridge.

"I owed him," said Garrus, in his new, flat voice.

"A little warning would have been nice!"

He didn't answer, but a second shot rang out and caught an engineer as she tried to jump the barricade. The mercs kept coming.

Shepard hit the Charge again. And again. Sweat ran into her eyes. Her amp whined dangerously at the base of her skull, where the warning pinprick of a headache had begun.

"Shepard, get out of my line of sight! I can't aim with you all over the place!"

Get used to it, Garrus, because this is me now. In your way.

Bitterness was a tool, too. It made her fast. It made her graceful. She darted across the battlefield, twisting the bitter coil in her gut into something usable. Garrus' shots grazed her barriers, but she kept moving. She couldn't stop. Movement was the only thing that saved her.

Tali, turning away. Use it. The body that only felt like it belonged to her when it was fighting. Use it. The thing in her room, spilling warnings in its cracked voice. Use it.

Garrus, flinching from her. Garrus, ready to fight until he died. Garrus, alone.

Use it.

Her arms burned with muscle fatigue. So far, none of the Eclipse had tried to disable her hands. One of the few benefits of fighting other biotics was their delicacy about certain body parts. They preserved what was precious to them. Shepard wasn't delicate. In the pauses as her amp buzzed and thrummed while it recharged, she fired low and wide, aiming for hands and knees. Garrus finished them off, each shot perfectly timed as she rolled into cover.

See? We can work together.

She kept quiet. Words meant nothing. Only action. She stayed still long enough to snap off another Shockwave and rolled to the side, dodging return fire that never came.

"Garrus?" His pause lasted long enough to worry her. "Garrus, how're we looking?"

"We're clear," he replied, like every word was sand in his mouth.

"Miranda?"

"We're holding them, Commander, but if you plan on making your entrance, you need to do it now." Shepard rolled her shoulders. She could hear the shrieks of the vorcha, and the low bellow of a krogan.

"Copy that. Any sign of the Blue Suns?"

"None," said Miranda. "Commander -"

Shepard's teeth dug into her lip. "I heard you Miranda. Heading into the base." She sprinted to the end of the bridge, only slowing when she slipped through the doors. Silently, she made her way to the end of the entry hallway and crouched against the doorframe. Two vorcha hid behind a low shelf, reloading thermal clips with their backs to her. She tested her amp and winced. She had four, maybe five good bursts left. Anything beyond that and she'd start hemorraghing.

She eased out of cover to give herself a clear line of sight. It hurt to pull the energy down into her arms, and the Shockwave scalded the skin on her palms as she aimed. She'd have a fever in a few minutes.

Use it, she told herself. Anything's a tool if you work hard enough.

She flung the Shockwave across the room. It ripped through the pair of vorcha and knocked one of the krogan off his feet. Only one vorcha stood between her and the stairs and for that, she could -

"Charging!" she screamed, and used the pain in her hands to throw herself forward. She staggered when she re-entered, and nearly tripped over the body of the vorcha. The impact had almost broken it in two.

"Commander?" Miranda's voice echoed under her skin.

Shepard winced as the threat of a headache turned into an attack. "I'm fine," she said. "On my way." She started to run, but stumbled on a loose tile and fell against the bannister.

"Shepard!" The gunfire from Miranda's position paused.

She used my name. Good to know she cares.

"Focus!" she shouted. "Keep that path behind me clear!"

The gunfire started again, just in time. Two more vorcha - how were there so many? - had started for the stairs while Shepard steadied herself, and made it within three feet of her position before Jacob hit them with a Throw.

Shepard shoved herself up and kept running, shotgun braced against her hip. At the top of the stairs, she dropped behind the railing. Switch clip, catch breath, focus. She gave herself three seconds, ears straining for any warning noises behind her, and peered down the hall toward the balcony.

Garm.

She'd only seen him at a distance before, but there was no mistaking the armo r, or the sweet-sharp smell of his biotics, soured by his sweat. Garrus had given no details of their fight, but that omission told her enough. It had been bad, bad enough to kill the words in Garrus' mouth.

There was no reason why the sight of Garm should have filled her with so much anger, but it rose in her like a spear until her vision blurred. He had his back to her as he stalked toward Archangel - toward Garrus.

Moving as silently as her armor allowed, Shepard stepped out of cover and into the center of the hallway.

One shot to take down his barriers, switch to incendiary ammo for his armor, and -

Her planning died when she focused just beyond Garm, where a dark flicker reformed itself into a familiar shape.

The black-haired woman stood beside Garm, just outside the doorway, watching Shepard. Her head dipped in a slow arc under the tangle of her hair, white eyes glowing against dark skin.

Shepard fired twice. The first shot went wild, the second took down Garm's barriers. Her shotgun dug into her hip on the recoil, hard enough to bruise through her armor. A seam caught at her skin, and she felt the tear run down her thigh, twisting inward. Garm began to turn, lips curled back from his teeth, and a blue halo flared around him.

Medi-gel, get to the medi-gel. Her mind refused to focus, too distracted by pain to obey, but her hands moved to the pouch at her waist on instinct. She plugged a pack into her suit's and waited for the cool relief.

"Shepard," said the woman. "Shepard, move."

"I'm moving, dammit!" she screamed. The adrenalin in her system made her nauseous. "What the hell else do you want?" The world lurched sideways, every thought unmoored and tangled. When Shepard looked down at her hands, they gleamed wetly in the hallway lights, covered in blue blood.

She blinked. The blood vanished.

"Move!" yelled the woman. Her voice ground against Shepard's skin like grains of sand, and spiraled upward into a cry. Shepard didn't look back; she threw herself into the hallway and crouched, shotgun aimed for Garm's back.

Garm had finished his turn, and faced her with a smile. She knew how she looked: small and pale, trembling in her armor. An easy target - but fear was just another tool.

She stayed rooted in place as Garm charged her. The hallway shook with his footsteps, but she held herself still, even as her body struggled against her control. The second before Garm collided with her, she whirled to the side and crouched against the wall. He pounded past her, unsteady as he sped toward the top of the stairs. She slammed in the incendiary pack and fired. His armor chipped and peeled away, some of it blowing back to cut the exposed skin on her face and neck. She shielded her eyes, but one of the pieces buried itself just above her left eye. She swiped the blood and sweat away, in time to see Garm swing back around.

He was a two-thousand-pound berserker in armor who stank of blood, but she was Commander Shepard. She'd been pulled out of death's mouth. What threat could a krogan offer?

She laughed, and took her eyes off Garm for a split second, long enough for him to charge her. At the edge of her hearing, Miranda called her name, and the gunshots from the balcony paused for the second time. In the second before Garm hit her, she jumped, legs bent, and smashed her feet into his chest. The impact only staggered him for a moment, but Shepard flew backwards to hit the floor shoulders-first. She lost her breath as her ribs strained, but she caught herself and leveraged her momentum to push herself upright.

The move would have been a terrible choice if she hadn't still been healing, if she hadn't been in full armor, if she hadn't been fighting a goddamn krogan. The leap bowed her spine, almost folded her in half, and something snapped on the right side of her ribcage as one of the too-soft bones - maybe more than one - broke.

She cried out before she could stop herself and jammed her fist against her mouth. Garm straightened, teeth bared, and back up to start another charge.

The gunfire hadn't started up again. Shepard chanced a glance back into the room, but all she saw was the edge of a bookshelf.

"Stay in it!" she yelled. "Keep the base and the bridge clear!" She shoved another medi-gel pack into the port on her armor as she swung back into cover. Almost two seconds went by before the medi-gel slid into her bloodstream and numbed the burning ache in her ribs. She pivoted back into the hallway, a laugh bubbling up within her as the adrenalin hit her again.

Joy - in her body, in its abilities, in every movement it made - flooded her, cool and steadying. It wasn't just a tool: it was her ally. When Garm ran at her again, she pulled the last bolt of energy down from her amp, through her aching arms, and slammed him into the ceiling. Her amp fired a last, warning burst, and went quiet at the back of her head.

She'd have to finish it the hard way.

Someone shouted behind her, but the words disappeared under the roar of her bloodstream. She ran down the hallway, shotgun raised high, and brought the barrel down into Garm's open mouth. He swiped at her legs to knock her off balance; she came down hard on her left knee and fell forward. Her shotgun jammed against the soft flesh at the back of Garm's throat.

Enough playing, she screamed at herself. Finish it!

Garm's hands scrabbled at the barrel of her shotgun. He gagged around the metal. The sound made Shepard's spine tighten; the sourceless rage bellowed in her head, and the edges of the hole shivered.

"Try and regenerate," she shouted. Garm's eyes went wide. "Try!" She fired.

Garm's legs spasmed as his primary nervous system crashed. The secondary system tried to take over, but Shepard fired again, and the regenerating nerves unraveled. Steaming blood spilled out of the hole in the back of his head. She fired a last shot, just to be sure, even though Garm's eyes had gone watery and unfocused, and his breathing had stopped.

She rose unsteadily, leaning on her shotgun for support. The tear on her thigh ached dully under the medi-gel's haze. Her hands felt like she'd grabbed a steam pipe, her ribs ached when she inhaled, but the injuries she could feel didn't worry her as much as the ones she hadn't felt yet. Once the medi-gel and adrenalin faded, she'd be in bad shape.

No time to rest; they still had the Blue Suns and an exit to worry about. Her feet carried her toward the balcony.

The woman was gone.

Figures.

Shepard glanced at her hands. Nothing but red blood - hers and Garm's - covered them. She passed Jacob and Miranda, registering their blank incredulity, and kept her eyes on Garrus. Keep walking. Breathe it out.

"Garm's down," said Shepard. She winced at the shrapnel in her face, and pulled out the piece above her eye. A trickle of blood dripped over her brow. She brushed it away. "How're we looking?"

"The bridge is clear. And now Garm and Jaroth are dead. Maybe it's not such a bad day..." He turned around slowly, still avoiding looking at her, but at the last moment his gaze fell on her face. In two quick steps he crossed the room to stand in front of her, eyes intent, with no regard for her personal space. She didn't care.

"Spirits," he breathed. The worry in his voice hit her like a narcotic. She closed her eyes, concentrating on his warmth in front of her. "Shepard, are you all right?"

She opened her eyes and nodded. "I'm fine. Doesn't look it, but I'm fine." A twinge in her ribs called her a liar. "I'll be better when we get back to the ship. Burned out my amp, so you won't have to worry about any more charging for a while."

Garrus made a soft noise, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. A moment later, the stiffness in his posture melted away. His head dropped between his shoulders, until his forehead brushed her temple.

Oh thank God, she thought, too relieved to question the gesture. She reached up and touched his face with the tips of her fingers, murmuring his name. He pressed closer, his breathing shallow and fast.

"What happened to you?" she whispered, her mouth almost touching his mandible. He made the noise again. "Garrus, it's going to be okay. I've..."

Before she could finish, Garrus pulled back, face shuttered. Shepard closed her eyes and forced herself to straighten and turn away. When she glanced at her teammates, Jacob pointedly looked elsewhere, but Miranda met Shepard's eyes without any expression beyond a raised eyebrow. Shepard stared back until Miranda looked away.

Nothing to see here. Her throat ached again, as the urge to pull Garrus back moved through her. Nothing at all.

"I say we push," she said. "We've only got the Blue Suns to deal with, and I want out of here before they start whatever's kept them out of the fight so far. Garrus?"

He startled a little at the sound of his name, but he nodded. "Now's as good a time as any, but Blue Suns still have the most troops. And there's that gunship - unless you had your fun with that too." His careful, empty voice forced the joke flat. If Shepard had any energy to spare, she would have winced away from it.

"I wouldn't call it fun," she said. "But the gunship won't last against a couple hits from this guy." She patted the missile launcher at her back.

"Cathka?"

"I made him take a break."

"Still terrifying, Shepard." Garrus gave her a dry laugh. The silence swelled around them. Miranda sighed somewhere in the distance. His mandibles moved, his hungry stare at odds with his cold body language, but he shut away whatever he was going to say.

Shepard took a step away from Garrus, and schooled her face into her professional mask. Comfort would be in short supply, but she didn't have the luxury of pursuing it, especially not from Garrus. The step back was insurance, a guarantee her unruly body wouldn't reach out to him again.

"Everyone, gear up. Check your clips and shield strength." She saw a slight movement at the other end of the room, almost lost in a cluster of shadows.

Not that thing again, she prayed, and zoomed in her visor's HUD with a double blink. A bar of dusty light caught the suggestion of a blue and white pattern as a body swung into the room. Garrus saw it a moment after she did.

"They're rappelling down the walls! Get down!" He made a short gesture, like he wanted to shove her away before he spun back into cover against the balcony.

The first shots pinged against her barriers as she dropped behind a couch. The jagged point of her broken rib dug into her lung, and pain too deep to be used blanked out the room. So much for being a vanguard, she thought, and coughed out a laugh.

"Shepard!"

She blinked. Garrus peered at her around the edge of the couch, mandibles tight. She waved him back, cradling her ribs. I'm fine, she mouthed. His gaze sharpened.

Stay where you are, idiot. Keep shooting! She pushed herself up and pushed her last incendiary pack into her shotgun with shaking fingers. The moment before she turned to fire, a low, insistent whine made the air vibrate around her as an engine rolled over and woke up.

"Gunship!" she gasped. "Gunsh-" Her voice faded as a search light flooded the room. She dropped her shotgun with a clatter and fumbled for the missile launcher. The gunship filled the window, and Garrus rose to meet it.

"No!" She balanced the missile launcher on her knee to compensate for her unsteady hands and aimed. "Garrus, get down!"

Ten bodies, two rows.

The gunship fired a long liquid burst, sun-hot, and for a horrible, fragile moment, Garrus disappeared in a white flare. Somewhere, Tarak laughed, and the sticky black rage coated the inside of Shepard's head. She couldn't get to Garrus, but -

The missile launcher kicked back, and the recoil slammed its base into her ribs. The soft bones shattered under the pressure, but she held the trigger down until it choked, empty.

The gunship reared back, but the last missile smashed through the windshield, and ignited in a greedy blast that sucked the oxygen out of her lungs. Miranda screamed behind her as the gunship broke apart, the flames swallowing Tarak and his revenge in seconds.

It's done, she thought. The pain tried to overwhelm her, but it was her tool again. She could hold out a little longer. Her fingers twitched around the trigger, and the movement made the blistered skin on her palms threaten to rip. She shoved the missile launcher away, rolled to her hands and knees, and started to crawl toward the still body slumped against the wall. Something sticky coated her hands. Even before she looked down, she knew what it was.

Blue blood. And Garrus - Garrus didn't answer when she gasped his name.

"Garrus - oh god, we're going to get you out -"

Hold on. I've got you.

Time slid away from Shepard in a watery rush. She remembered shouting at Miranda, someone pressing medi-gel packs into her waiting hand, and the sickly-sweet smell of melted armor meeting skin.

She remembered her hands moving over Garrus' armor without any input from her brain, pulling the broken pieces away and trying to find where the blood, all the goddamn blood, was coming from.

And she remembered him sucking in a thick, clotted breath, his left eye bleary and dazed under his visor. His other eye - the right side of his face -

She wished she hadn't looked.

Miranda pulled her up, gentle but insistent, when Chakwas appeared at the door. Shepard shoved her back, leaving sticky blue handprints on Miranda's shoulders. Chakwas shouted something at Miranda, pointing at Shepard, but the words turned garbled and loose.

"Your translators are broken," said Shepard. Her knees blossomed in twin bursts of pain. When she looked down, she saw she was kneeling again, without remembering moving. Chakwas yelled something else, still incomprehensible, her face white except for two splotches of red high on her cheeks.

"How is he, doctor?" asked Shepard. "His face - his face is gone. You have to fix him." She inhaled, and cried out when a jagged point stabbed into her lung. The right side of her chest felt deflated and tight all at once. "Garrus -"

Chakwas made a slashing gesture in the air. Miranda's arms looped under Shepard's and yanked her upward. Shepard tried to scream as the movement made her ribs press inward, but all the air had left her lungs. Black stains circled the edge of her vision, and Chakwas' voice fell into the distance.

"Garrus," she gasped. His hand twitched on the ground, clenching and unclenching endlessly, as the dark closed over her.